For U.S. cross country skiing, Jessie Diggins is helping the extraordinary become more routine

ZHANGJIAKOU, China - Years ago in the first race of her Olympics debut, a sprightly young skier surpassed her own expectations and churned her way from 27th to an eighth-place finish in the women’s 15-kilometer skiathlon. At the time, it was a meaningful moment for Team USA: a newcomer named Jessie Diggins had tied the best performance by an American woman in an Olympic cross-country ski race. She had been aiming for top-20, at best.

The United States’ expectations are a little higher these days.

Exactly eight years to the day after Diggins announced herself on the Olympic scene in Sochi, Russia, the 30-year-old made history again by winning a bronze medal in the women’s sprint free final on a frostbitten Tuesday night at the National Cross-Country Centre. It is just the second individual cross-country medal for the United States in Olympic history, the first since Bill Koch took silver in the 1976 Innsbruck Games.

It is also the first cross-country medal in a sprint event for the United States, won in 3 minutes 12.84 seconds.

A pair of Swedes finished ahead of Diggins, with Jonna Sundling winning gold in 3:09.68 and Maja Dahlqvist earning silver with 3:12.56.

“I think it’s overwhelming, but in a good way,” said Diggins, who won gold in the team sprint with Kikkan Randall at the 2018 PyeongChang Games, also a U.S. first. “It’s just really emotional for me, because this really belongs to the whole team and I think it’s just taken so many years to get here, to have a U.S. woman have an individual medal.”

Diggins’s triumph would have been cause enough for celebration, had there not been more firsts to fete.

The women’s final was the first time a sprint final has featured more than one American - two-time Olympian Rosie Brennan of Anchorage, a skier who doesn’t consider sprinting her strongest discipline and fell at the start of her quarterfinal heat only to pull off an impressive recovery and advance to the final - finished just off the podium in fourth.

[Alaska’s Rosie Brennan skis to 4th place in Olympic sprint — and comes close to history]

All four American men advanced past the qualifying rounds, with 21-year-old Ben Ogden earning the best ever U.S. men’s sprint result with a 12th-place finish.

“It shows the growing depth in our country, and I hope it [tells] a lot of people, like, have some patience,” Brennan said. “Keep training, keep going for it, and you never know where you’ll end up.”

[Full coverage of Alaskans at the Winter Olympics]

Peggy Shinn, an in-house writer for Team USA who wrote a book on the making of the U.S. women’s team, said the men’s results were significant in that they echoed what was happening on the women’s side a decade ago.

Diggins and Randall’s breakthrough gold in PyeongChang was no fluke, but evidence of steady, sustained progress and adequate support from the U.S. federation.

“The guys are learning a lot from the women, and they’re starting to build momentum,” Shinn said in an interview. “I think we’re really going to see a lot from them in four years - these are a lot of young guys, and I think they’re just on the cusp of breaking though. The fact that there were four of them in the heats, that there is what the U.S. women were doing 10 years ago.”

The men’s team also played a crucial role Tuesday in delivering Brennan some much needed footwear. She showed up to the venue with two left ski boots.

More evidence, Diggins said, of a unified team.

“It makes me just so happy to see that because I think we really are a family on the road,” Diggins said of Team USA’s progression over the years. “I haven’t been home since November, so we really lean on each other and take care of each other and you really feel it when somebody does well on the team.”

[Her Olympic experience ended in three minutes. It was still “perfect.”]

Diggins was strong throughout the event Tuesday, a gantlet of four, roughly three-minute races spread out over four hours. She posted the second-fastest time of the quarterfinal round, maneuvering an inside track on the final turn and finishing with a powerful push that separated her on the final 100 meters of a race that commonly leaves skiers collapsed at the end, skis splayed, gasping for air.

“She will just put herself into the deepest pain cave you could imagine to get to the finish line,” Shinn said. “She’s got a lot of super powers, but that’s one of them.”

Last year, Diggins nabbed what was then the loftiest individual title of her career and became the first American to win the multistage Tour de Ski. She has not only honed her super powers but also worked to mentor younger skiers on Team USA while speaking out on issues near to her heart.

She wrote a book in which she disclosed an eating disorder earlier in life, and discussed handling the newfound pressure that came with being an Olympic gold medalist.

“I’m just so thankful for our team, it’s been a lot of people working really hard for a long time. I think back in PyeongChang I was also very, very grateful, and I’m still very grateful now,” Diggins said.

“The last four years I’ve really found my voice, I’ve really found a lot of my purpose, and I feel like I’ve grown a lot but also I’m exactly the same person in pretty much every other way.”

Diggins may feel the same, but expectations - for herself and for her country - have changed.